I’ve Mentioned this Lesson Before

Since the comic is actually about this lesson, I figure it’s worth repeating:

Hey, he found some value in the conversation…

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A popular social media site gets the counting one wrong when it asks your opinion about getting more of the type of post you’re looking at. Their practice bugs me!

You measure fun, so “amount” is correct, but you count hangovers, so they should have “number” for the second choice. Right? I’m not a hangover expert.

Of course “just” has more than two meanings.

• In the immediate past
• Only
• (Plus other meanings that don’t apply here)

Well. They updated the software, and now I can’t make the caption into a link!

Look in the caption. So what does “serve”mean?

The humor is in the ambiguity:

• Serve something (to you)
• Serve (you to) something

I’m not sure what to call the difference except to say that the first one has an adverbial prepositional phrase and the second one has an indirect object.

I suppose “physics” is the best known example, but here’s another one: “headquarters.” The word ends in “s,” but it’s a singular.

Maybe treating the word as a plural is a Minnesotaism.